A 65-year-old man who spent 21 1/2 years on Georgia's death row for killing a neighbor was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night.

Robert Newland was pronounced dead at the state prison at Jackson at 7:35 p.m., about 13 minutes after the injection was administered, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville reported.

Newland was convicted in the May 1986 stabbing death of Carol Sanders Beatty, 27, on St. Simons Island. Authorities said he had been drinking heavily and tried to rape Beatty before fatally wounding her as she tried to fight him off.

But before she died at a hospital, she identified Newland as her assailant. Though she couldn't speak, she nodded affirmatively to each correct letter as a police detective recited the alphabet: N-E-W-L-A. He then asked if the name was Newland and she nodded again and squeezed his hand. She died within hours.

"I was drunk, I don't know why I did it," he told authorities when arrested. "I had no reason for it."

While he was convicted in August 1987 in took until Tuesday for his appeals to be exhausted and his sentence carried out.